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Comment by mlevental | Hacker News Reader

you know what's insane about that video? the CEO of a 100 (200?) person software company is writing docs. but then again i'm not surprised that wolfram is a micromanager.

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Attention to detail is not micro-managing. In fact, it's very very good thing and you should have respect for people at CEO level having this kind of care, understanding and passion for their products. It's kind of thing that makes Steve Jobs, the Steve Jobs.

Especially as documentation is kind of the core value proposition of Mathematica

The article says 800. I can't imagine what it would be like, to be part of a machine of 800 people basically set up to cater to the whims of one overlord.

Every company is set up to cater to the whims of one overlord. Then there is a group who can change the overlord. Most effective companies are dictatorships with a fairly reasonable dictator.

I don't think I necessarily agree. While having one person who has complete control and effectively focuses a business to the correct decisions and technical goals is super effective, part of that effectiveness is getting the rest of the business on the same mindset as you and giving employees room to add their technical nous to the work.

The criticism leveled (which I do not actually any insight to the truth of) is that essentially people have to follow his "whims" and are micromanaged, which does not bring out the best of employees and can be very stifling.

But that said, I don't know the truth of that criticism.

Two words: Larry. Ellison.

The way you say it is like you're saying that Documentation should be second class, not just that it is anyway. Keep in mind that the software in this particular case, is software used mostly for the API, so the Documentation is front and centre.

Very much so. The documentation is the specification, so it's not merely writing the documentation, but writing the specification.

Another interesting tidbit that plays into this...the syntax coloring is programmatically derived from the documentation (yet another consequence of the documentation being the specification). This wasn't mentioned in the meeting because most or all of the participants already knew this, but it's an important part of the subtext of the discussion.

Speaking as an insider who wasn't present at that particular meeting, but has been present in some other live-streamed meetings.

And I quote...

> Usually we (which quite often actually means me) will write documentation for a function before the function is implemented.

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